What Are Solo Ads? – Everything You Need To Know About How To Buy Solo Ads

What Are Solo Ads? – Everything You Need To Know About How To Buy Solo Ads

Solo ads are quickly becoming a favorite traffic paid source of many top digital marketers, affiliate marketers and network marketers. So whether you are considering buying solo ads for digital marketing, solo ads for affiliate marketing or solo ads for network marketing, this article will teach you everything you need to know about solo ads.

What Are Solo Ads?

Solo ads are paying someone with a huge email list to send out a link to your offer to their email list

You pay in advance for each link click. The normal price range is 35 cents – 85 cents per click.

You agree on the number of clicks and price per click up front with the solo ad vendor, then it’s up to the vendor to email a large enough segment of their list to fulfill your order.

Some vendors prefer to write the email that contains your link themselves, others prefer to use your email swipe. (This is typically negotiable).

You must send solo ad traffic to an email optin page, not directly to a sales page/order form.

Clicks solo (also called ‘pure solo traffic’) means the clicks are coming from only from links in the vendor’s email broadcast

Funnel Clicks means the clicks are coming from a link click outside an email broadcast
(For example from a button on a thank you page of a funnel).

Mixed clicks are a combination of clicks solo and funnel clicks. 99% of solo ad traffic is mixed clicks, but we say ‘solo ads’ and ‘clicks solo’ colloquially to refer to what is really mixed clicks.

Udimi is the premier solo ad marketplace with hundreds of vendors. You can read reviews and compare vendors before making a purchase. Udimi acts as a neutral third party between buyer and seller, to make sure the vendor delivers all your clicks as agreed. When you sign up for Udimi here, you’ll get a $5 credit in your account, and an email with all my best solo ad tips and best Udiimi vendors.

3 Tiers of Solo Ad Traffic Quality

If you’re buying solo ads (or planning on it soon) it’s important to understand the 3 tiers of traffic quality.

You’ve probably seen them mentioned before (T1, T2, T3).

ClickMagick will tell you how many clicks on each solo ad purchase came from each traffic quality tier.

T1, T2 and T3 have standardized and broadly accepted definitions.

Here’s how Clickmagick’s support docs explain the 3 tiers:

“So what exactly are the 3 “tiers” of traffic?

Tier 1 is “premium” traffic from these 5 English-speaking countries where you’ll typically get the most opt-ins and conversions:

United States
Canada
United Kingdom
Australia
New Zealand

More often than not, this is the traffic you’ll want.

Your conversion rates will simply be the highest with users from these countries (unless you’re promoting a country-specific or other unique offer).

Tier 2 consists of 43 countries where the majority of the remaining “good” traffic comes from:

Tier 3 consists of all the other countries where few leads or conversions ever come from …

… countries like Pakistan, Vietnam, Nigeria …

… and unless you’re an expert at monetizing this type of traffic you’ll generally want to avoid Tier 3 traffic because it’s essentially worthless to the average online marketer.”

Best Solo Ads Tip

When deciding whether a solo ad run was a success, the most important ClickMagick stat is CPA (cost per email subscriber).

CPA is a far more metric that Optin percentage.
This is because different solo ad vendors charge different costs per click.

Also solo ad vendors overdeliver on your order (give you extra free clicks) by varying amounts.

CPA is the metric that essentially levels the playing field between different solo ad vendors, as it encompasses the cost per click and amount of over delivery into the calculation of the statistic, whereas optin rate doesn’t.

CPA allows you to easily and fairly compare two vendors that charge completely different prices side by side.

A lower optin rate from a vendor that charges a lower cost per click may be better than a higher optin rate from a vendor that charges a higher price per click.

CPA does this math for you and allows you to objectively compare two dissimilar solo vendors equally.

How to Decide if Your Solo Ad Run Was a Success

I always recommend frequently testing out new solo ad vendors with a 100 click test run..

Be willing to lose money on the test runs, in order to gain valuable data in ClickMagick and to find vendors that are undiscovered ‘diamonds in the rough’..

But how do you know whether a solo ad test run was successful or not?

Should you scale up to 300 clicks solo or not buy any more from them?

Everything you need to decide whether a solo ad purchase was a success can be found in your ClickMagick stats.

Did they deliver your order as agreed?

You should not have to pay for any T3 clicks solo.

So look at whether the total T1 plus T2 clicks is equal to or greater than the number of clicks solo purchased.

Also, if a certain percentage of T1 clicks was agreed upon, make sure the vendor met that requirement.

T3 clicks are acceptable, as long as the solo ad vendor gave you extra T1 and T2 clicks to compensate for these.

What was your cost per email optin?
Ensure you’re paying less than $2 per email optin overall.

Did the vendor overdeliver on your order?

The industry standard is for vendors to overdeliver by at least 10%. The more extra free clicks you get the better though.

What was the traffic quality score?

ClickMagick will tell you the traffic quality score of solo ads. ClickMagick traffic quality score goes from 1-100. You’ll want to see a traffic quality score of 80 or higher on a solo ad purchase that gave you great results.

Keep in mind, the factor of ClickMagick traffic quality score that is weighted the heaviest is traffic quality tier. So if you have 100% T1 clicks solo, this will bias your ClickMagick traffic quality score slightly upward. If you purchased 80% T1 or less, this will bias your ClickMagick traffic quality score slightly downwards.

Percentage of mobile clicks

This is the negative factor that you should give the smallest weight to, but should still factor in to your analysis. It’s been found that for some reason, people are more likely to optin to an email list or make a purchase when on a desktop device.. As such, desktop clicks solo are worth more to you. Ideally, you’ll want to receive no more than 65% mobile clicks on a test run, but not meeting this metric should not be a deal breaker typically.

Best Solo Ads Marketplace

Udimi is one of the most popular marketplaces to buy solo ads. You can browse reviews and compare vendor results and prices before making a solo ad purchase. Udimi acts as an independent third party between buyer and seller, to make sure the vendor delivers your solo as order as agreed. When you sign up for Udimi here, you’ll get a $5 credit in your account, and an email with all my best solo ad tips and best Udiimi vendors.